Brunch Time Literature Episode 004:Introduction to Pope's "The Rape of the Lock"

Brunch Time Literature: Episode 004                                                                    KK Bonteh

CRTV Yaoundé                                                                                                    Monday 16/11/2015

BRUNCH TIME LITERATURE BY KK BONTEH

 Time: 10:30 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. Mondays & Fridays

The Rape of the Lock: Introduction

In A Nutshell

Picture this.

You're sitting there, having a perfectly lovely day, when someone you thought was your friend betrays you in the worst way possible.

Do they copy your homework? Well, no. Do they spread a vicious rumor about you around school? Nope, not that either. It's worse.

They cut off a lock of your hair.

Okay, so that situation has a bit of the ridiculous about it. But Alexander Pope is nothing if not a bit ridiculous. And he uses just such an occasion—someone cutting off a friend's lock of hair—to craft this long, funny, famous poem, The Rape of the Lock.

We know: nowadays the word "rape" usually describes a horrific situation at which laughing is strictly—and rightly—forbidden. But back in 1714, when Pope published The Rape of the Lock, the term "rape" had a broader definition. Sure, they used it as we do, but it could also refer to the act of seizing or taking anything by force (you can see where our more specific use of the word today comes from—and both meanings, as you'll also see when we dive into analysis, are active in this poem).

Two years earlier, at a very fancy party just outside of London, the young Lord Petre had snuck up behind a young lady, Belle Fermor, and snipped off a lock of her hair (literally seizing it by force) without her consent. That actually happened. Neither Belle nor her parents appreciated this assault on her hairstyle, especially since they had been considering Lord Petre as a potential husband for her.

Yeah, that marriage didn't exactly pan out. Instead, the two families fell out hard with each other. You could call it a feud, Capulet-Montague style.

After a while things got so bad between them that a mutual acquaintance asked the young poet Alexander Pope (who was also good friends with both families) to write a poem that might make the whole affair into something funny. The idea was to end the feud with laughter and good humor.

Pope was pretty young at this point—twenty-four years old—and at the very beginning of his career. Still, he was already getting a name for himself as one of the hottest young poets in London. Back in those days, before radio, television, and the Internet, poets were full-on celebrities. You could call them the rap stars of their culture, writing catchy political and social satire that everyone who knew how to read, did.

Poetry was the social media of its time: imagine Facebook in verse, or a rhyming Twitter feed. A poem might tell you everything about the extramarital affairs of the King of England, or the money troubles of his Prime Minister, or the bad clothing choices of his oldest son. Pope was ambitious for this kind of celebrity and eager to advance his career, so he took the request to write this poem about what happened between two personal friends as an opportunity to show off his education and his considerable talent with meter, rhyme, and allusion.

Pope wrote an initial version of the poem in 1712, telling the basic story of Belle and Lord Petre, and then made it twice as long two years later, turning it into a gentle satire on social pretension and vanity. With the expanded version, Pope succeeded in reuniting his friends and in achieving poetic fame: The Rape of the Lock was a smash hit throughout his lifetime and became one of his most famous and best-loved poems. It was also his most light-hearted (coincidence?). As he got older and more involved in politics, his outlook (and his poetic satires) got a lot more bitter and made him many enemies.

The Rape of the Lock describes what happened just before (the heroine waking up and getting dressed for the party), during (the card game at the party that she plays, which distracts her) and just after (the heroine and her friends completely freaking out over her unwanted new do) Lord Petre snips off Belle Fermor's hair, but in the most elaborate language and fanciful style possible. You might even say that the poem is more about its own style and language than it is about the actual event it describes.

Pope takes the trivial crisis of a spoiled society girl losing a piece of her hair to a rich boy's prank, and makes it larger than life by adding in supernatural beings (the Sylphs, fairy-like critters who oversee and comment on the action), and by comparing it to major Classical epics like Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid. Belle's obsession with her own looks; Lord Petre's obsession with Belle's hair; Pope's obsession with showing off his mad poetry skills, imagination, and intellect: put it all together, and you'll find the Rape of the Lock is a seriously obsessive poem. 

Why Should I Care?

Don't be put off by the poem's length and its incredibly formal language: stay patient, resist the temptation to go back to that email full of cute guilty-pet pictures your aunt just sent you, read the poem slowly (with our help of course), and prepare yourself for a big payoff. Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock delivers on many levels: social, poetic, political, and aesthetic. All that is to say: this poem is awesome.

How often in your own daily life do people (your friends, your brothers or sisters, your parents, your teachers) seem to blow up over completely trivial things? How many times have you gone off the deep end over something silly and then felt kind of dumb about it later? Have you ever wished you could just sit everyone down and have them put things into perspective? Or that someone could do that with you sometimes?

The Rape of the Lock looks at tempests in teapots from a uniquely double perspective. On the one hand, the poem recognizes that for some people, an event so slight as the loss of a piece of hair can be a Big Freaking Deal. And that's understandable if you look at it from their point of view. But then the poem also shows how important it is to keep perspective and a sense of humor about all of those little things that can really (and sometimes literally) get us down.

This social attitude spills over into the poem's politics as well. Think about all of the times our representatives in Congress bog themselves down in arguments about trivial points while the larger issues they should worry about (children going hungry, schools going downhill, the rising cost of living) get ignored?

What The Rape of the Lock finally shows you is how important it is to look at the bigger picture. Yep, that's right: don't sweat the small stuff. At the same time, though, the poem is busting at the seams with small stuff: perfect rhymes, detailed allusions, gorgeous imagery. What gives?

Here's a deep thought for you: Pope uses the small stuff (a beautifully written poem) to make his readers get over their own small stuff (a petty fight over a lock of hair). The takeaway point? Even small stuff has its place. But you have to keep it in its place. Got it?

Dedication Summary

                                                    To Mrs. Arabella Fermor

Madam,
It will be in vain to deny that I have some Regard for this Piece, since I Dedicate it to You. Yet You may bear me Witness, it was intended only to divert a few young Ladies, who have good Sense and Good Humour enough, to laugh not only at their Sex's little unguarded Follies, but at their own. But as it was communicated with the Air of a Secret, it soon found its Way into the World. An imperfect copy having been offer'd to a Bookseller, You had the Good-Nature for my Sake to consent to the Publication of one more correct: This I was forc'd to before I had executed half my Design, for the Machinery was entirely wanting to compleat it. The Machinery, Madam, is a Term invented by the Criticks, to signify that Part which the Deities, Angels, or Daemons, are made to act in a Poem: For the ancient Poets are in one respect like many modern Ladies; Let an Action be never so trivial in it self, they always make it appear of the utmost Importance. These Machines I determin'd to raise on a very new and odd Foundation, the Rosicrucian Doctrine of Spirits.
I know how disagreeable it is to make use of hard Words before a Lady; but 'tis so much the Concern of a Poet to have his Works understood, and particularly by your Sex, that You must give me leave to explain two or three difficult Terms.
The Rosicrucians are a People I must bring You acquainted with. The best Account I know of them is in a French Book call'd Le Comte de Gabalis, which both in its Title and Size is so like a Novel, that many of the Fair Sex have read it for one by Mistake. According to these Gentlemen, the four Elements are inhabited by Spirits, which they call Sylphs, Gnomes, Nymphs, and Salamanders. The Gnomes, or Daemons of Earth, delight in Mischief; but the Sylphs, whose Habitation is in the Air, are the best-condition'd Creatures imaginable. For they say, any Mortals may enjoy the most intimate Familiarities with these gentle Spirits, upon a Condition very easie to all true Adepts, an inviolate Preservation of Chastity. As to the following Canto's, all the Passages of them are as Fabulous, as the Vision at the Beginning, or the Transformation at the End; (Except the Loss of your Hair, which I always mention with Reverence.) The Human Persons are as Fictitious as the Airy ones; and the Character of Belinda, as it is now manag'd, resembles You in nothing but in Beauty. If this Poem had as many graces as there are in Your Person, or in Your Mind, yet I could never hope it should pass thro' the World half so Uncensured as You have done. But let its Fortune be what it will, mine is happy enough, to have given me this Occasion of assuring You that I am, with the truest Esteem,
Madam,
Your Most Obedient
Humble Servant.
A. Pope.

• If you ever wind up reading a lot of 18th-century British poetry, you'll notice that many of the longer poems feature a letter of dedication, usually to a famous, powerful, rich, or important person (ideally, for the poet, a person who has all four of those things going on at once) at the very beginning of the work. Poets would often do this as a way to associate their work with that powerful or famous person, kind of like the way Nike named a style of basketball shoe the Air Jordan. Call it a form of literary endorsement.
• The Rape of the Lock is no exception. While Arabella Fermor isn't famous at this point or politically powerful, here Pope has to work his way through a potentially complicated situation: he needs to make sure that Arabella is okay with him taking her story public. And even if she's not okay with it, he needs to make sure his readers know that he at least tried to make her okay with it. He's going to publish it either way.
• You might notice that the letter addresses Arabella as "Mrs."; she's not actually married at this point, though. People in the 18th century addressed all respectable women as "Mrs", which was shorthand for "Mistress."
• First, Pope explains to her his reasons for publishing the original poem (as opposed to just writing it out and giving it to all of the parties concerned): according to him, he was forced to take it public, as copies were leaking out and it would have been published anyway, so why not make sure the official version is the one that gets out? (Don't be fooled by Pope's disclaimer here, though. He knows this poem is top-notch and wants to take public credit for it).
• Pope then explains some of the more obscure bells and whistles he's added to the poem's original story. That's the "Machinery" he describes in the second and third paragraphs.
• Notice here his two-sided, "compliment" (NOT) to women readers in general, and Arabella in particular, when he says "I know how disagreeable it is to make use of hard Words before a Lady; but 'tis so much the Concern of a Poet to have his Works understood, and particularly by your Sex, that You must give me leave to explain two or three difficult Terms."
• If this sounds condescending to you, you're right. It is. Pope may be gallant and polite here, but like most 18th-century men of the educated class, he had a sadly low opinion of women's intellect and abilities. We're still two hundred and twenty-six years away from women getting the vote, and just over two hundred and fifty years away from Title IX, folks.
• "Machinery," as Pope next explains to Arabella, is a fancy word for the supernatural elements in an epic poem. For Homer and Virgil, these would be the old Greek gods who meddled in all of the battlefield action; for Pope, it's the Sylphs and Gnomes he describes here. The Rosicrucians were a medieval secret society that practiced alchemy and dabbled in Middle Eastern philosophy. 
• That book Pope mentions with the French title? It's Le Comte de Gabalis ("the Count Gabalis"), a screwball comedy written in the 1670s about occult beliefs and mystical spirits, with some history and philosophy thrown in. The Rosicrucians loved it. 
• The final two paragraphs of this opening letter dedicate the poem to Arabella, and are also a fancy version of the "all characters in this work are fictitious" disclaimer you'll often find at the beginning or end of a movie. 
• You might also notice that a lot of the words in the letter (and throughout the entire poem) appear to be randomly capitalized or italicized, or misspelled. While sometimes the capitalization or italicization is meaningful (as when Pope personifies a noun, or wants to emphasize a word), for the most part it is random. 
• Here's the deal: in the early 18th century, the English language wasn't yet fully standardized. There were no official, comprehensive dictionaries or guides to correct or proper grammar and spelling. (We know, you might now be wishing you lived back then, right?) At this point too few people knew how to read and write to even bother. But over the next hundred years, literacy exploded, and as more folk became literate, language became more regulated and codified.

Canto I Summary

Lines 1-12

WHAT dire Offence from am'rous Causes springs,
What mighty Contests rise from trivial Things,
I sing—This Verse to Caryll, Muse! is due;
This, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view:
Slight is the Subject, but not so the Praise,
If She inspire, and He approve my Lays.

Say what strange Motive, Goddess! cou'd compel
A well-bred Lord t'assault a gentle Belle?
Oh say what stranger Cause, yet unexplor'd,
Cou'd make a gentle Belle reject a Lord?
In Tasks so bold, can Little Men engage,
and in soft Bosoms dwells such Mighty Rage?

·                     Do you ever say a quick prayer to some higher power before trying to do something really difficult, like nail a foul shot in a basketball game or take a hairy test in Algebra class? Ancient Greek and Roman poets like Homer (in the Iliad) and Virgil (in the Aeneid), and British heavyweights like John Milton (in Paradise Lost) would do the same thing as they began their epics, dedicating their poetic efforts to (and asking for inspirational help from) the Muses, the Greek gods, or (in Milton's case) God himself. 

·                     In the first six lines of Canto I, Pope is doing just that, but in a very tongue-in-cheek way. Instead of a divinity, he dedicates the poem to his and Arabella Fermor's friend John Caryll, who originally asked him to write it, and to "Belinda" (i.e., Arabella, the woman the poem is ostensibly about). This is called an invocation. 

·                     Here Pope sets the stage for the action that's coming, and gives us a bit of a mystery to follow as we read. Why (as he asks the "Goddess"—probably a Muse) would a Lord assault a young Lady? Why would a young Lady get angry at a Lord? Why would a society man do such a thing? And are society women really capable of getting into a rage about it? 

·                     Also here at the very beginning of his long poem, with this mock-dedication, Pope is setting his readers up for a theme that will come back over and over again: the Rape of the Lock as what literature historians call a mock epic: a poem that takes as its model far more serious epics like the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, and Paradise Lost, using high-flying poetic language and grand metaphors just like they do. But mock epics are about something trivial and small, like a young society woman losing a piece of her hair, instead of about a great war between the Trojans and Greeks, or the founding of the Roman Empire, or the fall of Adam and Eve.

·                     Pope isn't just making fun of grand epics, though: he's also paying an affectionate tribute to them, and demonstrating at the same time how well he knows epic poetry. Every educated person of Pope's day knew epic poetry really well, better even than you know the lyrics to the latest Katy Perry single. That's because the early 18th century loved Classical Greek and Roman culture. Historians call it the age of neoclassicism.

·                     This makes The Rape of the Lock especially fun for people who have read the Iliad and the Odyssey and the Aeneid. Have you ever listened to Weird Al Yankovic doing his "Polka Face" spoof of Lady Gaga's "Poker Face," or his "Party in the CIA" version of Miley Cyrus's "Party in the U.S.A"? They're really funny and clever all at the same time, especially if you know the original song really well. The Rape of the Lock is a lot like that. This is only the first of many mock-epic moments in the poem; we'll point them out to you as we go through it. 

·                     Following the mock-epic theme, then, the first twelve lines go about juxtaposing the grand and the trivial. Notice how the first line contains "dire Offence" (i.e., a horrific crime) and "am'rous Causes" (that's "amorous," meaning connected to love and romance, but Pope has shortened the word with an apostrophe to make it fit the meter of the line.)? 

·                     And notice how the second line contains "mighty Contests" and "trivial Things"? How about in line eleven, which has "Tasks so bold" and "Little Men," or line twelve, with "soft Bosoms" and "mighty Rage"? Yep, that's juxtaposition again. The technique is often used (as it is here) as a tool of satire. 

·                     By placing the high and mighty next to the trivial, Pope can actually make the high and mighty seem trivial, and then get his readers to question why they thought it was high and mighty in the first place. 

·                     Another cool poetic trick that Pope uses often comes in the last two lines of this section: "In Tasks so Bold, can little Men engage,/ And in soft Bosoms dwell such mighty Rage?" (11-12). If you look at both lines together, you'll see that the first half of the first line ("Tasks so Bold") goes with the second half of the second line ("mighty Rage"), and the second half of the first line ("little Men") goes well with the first half of the second ("soft Bosoms"). 

·                     This poetic device is called a chiasmus, from the Greek word for "cross." Look for more instances of it throughout the poem.

·                     What do you think Pope is up to by using it here?

·                     Have you noticed the poem's form by now? The entire thing, like these first twelve lines, is written in iambic pentameter and rhymed couplets (another term for these is heroic couplets). 

·                     See the "Form and Meter" section for a more detailed description of the heroic couplet, but take a sec to notice here (and all the way through the poem) how the side-by-side pairing of the couplets makes it easy for Pope to do the kind of juxtaposition we were looking at above. 

·                     Pope was really, really, really good at heroic couplets, by the way. And we mean good. For a short description of just how good, see our guide to a snippet from one of his later poems, An Essay on Criticism.

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Ladies and gentlemen, that was Brunch Time Literature, presented to you by KK Bonteh. If you did enjoy it or have any suggestions to make why not write to us at Brunch Time Literature, CRTV Broadcasting House Yaoundé, or visit us at MTC Lanhuage Institute Biyem-Assi Stade, Yaounde. We accept voice calls and SMS us through telephone number 677.53.42.47; and emails at www.kkbonteh@yahoo.com. For details, visit our website at www.gicmtc.com. Until our next Episode, bye-bye! And stay connected to CRTV.

Brunch Time Literature: Episode 03                                                                     K.K. Bonteh

CRTV                                                                                                               Friday, 13/11/2015

Broadcasting House, Yaoundé                                                        Time: 10:30 – 10:45 a.m.

Hamlet's First Soliloquy and Analysis

1.     What is a soliloquy?

A long, usually serious speech that a character in a play makes to an audience and that reveals the character’s thoughts; the act of talking to oneself; the dramatic monologue that represents a series of unspoken reflections.

2.     Which soliloquy would you like to focus on today?

The very first: Hamlet's Soliloquy 1: O, that this too too solid flesh would melt (1.2) Annotations

HAMLET- Original Text

Oh, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt,

Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew

Or that the Everlasting had not fixed

His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God, God!

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Fie on ’t, ah fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden

That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature

Possess it merely. That it should come to this.

But two months dead—nay, not so much, not two.

So excellent a king, that was to this

Hyperion to a satyr. So loving to my mother

That he might not beteem the winds of heaven

Visit her face too roughly.—Heaven and earth,

Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him

As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on, and yet, within a month—

Let me not think on ’t. Frailty, thy name is woman!—

A little month, or ere those shoes were old

With which she followed my poor father’s body,

Like Niobe, all tears. Why she, even she—

O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason

Would have mourned longer!—married with my uncle,

My father’s brother, but no more like my father

Than I to Hercules. Within a month,

Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears

Had left the flushing in her gallèd eyes,

She married. O most wicked speed, to post

With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!

It is not nor it cannot come to good,

But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.

3. Away from the Shakespearean jargon, how would you render that diction in modern English?

HAMLET – Modern Version

Ah, I wish my dirty flesh could melt away into a vapor, or that God had not made a law against suicide. Oh God, God! How tired, stale, and pointless life is to me. Damn it! It’s like a garden that no one’s taking care of, and that’s growing wild. Only nasty weeds grow in it now. I can’t believe it’s come to this. My father’s only been dead for two months—no, not even two. Such an excellent king, as superior to my uncle as a god is to a beast, and so loving toward my mother that he kept the wind from blowing too hard on her face.

Oh God, do I have to remember that? She would hang on to him, and the more she was with him the more she wanted to be with him; she couldn’t get enough of him. Yet even so, within a month of my father’s death (I don’t even want to think about it. Oh women! You are so weak!), even before she had broken in the shoes she wore to his funeral, crying like crazy—even an animal would have mourned its mate longer than she did!—there she was marrying my uncle, my father’s brother, who’s about as much like my father as I’m like Hercules. Less than a month after my father’s death, even before the tears on her cheeks had dried, she remarried. Oh, so quick to jump into a bed of incest! That’s not good, and no good can come of it either. But my heart must break in silence, since I can’t mention my feelings aloud.

4. What is the primary function of the soliloquy within the function of the play?

 Commentary
Hamlet's passionate first soliloquy provides a striking contrast to the controlled and artificial dialogue that he must exchange with Claudius and his court. The primary function of the soliloquy is to reveal to the audience Hamlet's profound melancholia and the reasons for his despair. In a disjointed outpouring of disgust, anger, sorrow, and grief, Hamlet explains that, without exception, everything in his world is either futile or contemptible. His speech is saturated with suggestions of rot and corruption, as seen in the basic usage of words like "rank" (L.138) and "gross" (L.138), and in the metaphor associating the world with "an unweeded garden" (L.137). The nature of his grief is soon exposed, as we learn that his mother, Gertrude, has married her own brother-in-law only two months after the death of Hamlet's father. Hamlet is tormented by images of Gertrude's tender affections toward his father, believing that her display of love was a pretense to satisfy her own lust and greed. Hamlet even negates Gertrude's initial grief over the loss of her husband. She cried "unrighteous tears" (L.156) because the sorrow she expressed was insincere, belied by her reprehensible conduct.
      Notice Shakespeare's use of juxtaposition and contrast to enhance Hamlet's feelings of contempt, disgust, and inadequacy. The counterpointing between things divine and things earthly or profane is apparent from the opening sentence of the soliloquy, in which Hamlet expresses his anguished sense of being captive to his flesh. His desire for dissolution into dew, an impermanent substance, is expressive of his desire to escape from the corporality into a process suggestive of spiritual release. Immediately juxtaposed to this notion, and standing in contrast to "flesh", is his reference to the "Everlasting", the spiritual term for the duality. Paradoxically, in his aversion from the flesh, his body must seem to him to possess a state of permanence, closer to something everlasting than to the ephemeral nature of the dew he yearns to become" 
       Another striking juxtaposition in the soliloquy is Hamlet's use of Hyperion and a satyr to denote his father and his uncle, respectively. Hyperion, the Titan god of light, represents honour, virtue, and regality -- all traits belonging to Hamlet's father, the true King of Denmark. Satyrs, the half-human and half-beast companions of the wine-god Dionysus, represent lasciviousness and overindulgence, much like Hamlet's usurping uncle Claudius. It is no wonder, then, that Hamlet develops a disgust for, not only Claudius the man, but all of the behaviours and excesses associated with Claudius. In other passages from the play we see that Hamlet has begun to find revelry of any kind unacceptable, and, in particular, he loathes drinking and sensual dancing.
        A final important contrast in the soliloquy is seen in Hamlet's self-depreciating comment "but no more like my father/Than I to Hercules" (L.154-55). Although Hamlet's comparison of himself to the courageous Greek hero could be devoid of any deeper significance, it is more likely that the remark indicates Hamlet's developing lack of self worth -- a theme that will become the focus of his next soliloquy.

 [Hamlet's Soliloquy 2: O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! (2.2)]

5.                  One last question; contact: students, teachers of Literature in English, and fans of Literature in general may want to contact you and share their views, worries and concerns about this topic and others; any contact?

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CONCLUSION

Ladies and gentlemen, it is with this note that we draw the curtains for our today’s programme in which you have been listening to the voice of KK Bonteh.

Are you a student, a teacher, a researcher, or simply a fan of literature? Then Brunch Time Literature, is for you. We would like to share your deepest feelings. Contact us through the following address: Brunch Time Literature, CRTV Yaoundé, or SMS us through telephone number 242.14.48.48 or 677.53.42.47.

You can as well email us at kkbonteh@gmail.com or visit MTC Language Institute at www.gicmtc.com .

Until our next Episode, bye-bye! And stay connected to CRTV.

Brunch Time Literature: Episode 02                                                                   K.K. Bonteh

CRTV                                                                                                           Monday, 09/11/2015

Broadcasting House, Yaoundé                                                              Time: 10:30 – 10:45 a.m.

Introduction to William Shakespeare's

HAMLET, The Prince of Denmark

1.       Hamlet, The Prince of Denmark, under what literary genre would you place it; and what in brief is the story-line?

Hamlet  at a Glance

A Ghost appears at Elsinore castle. Prince Hamlet goes to the castle ramparts to watch for the apparition. When the Ghost reappears, it speaks to Hamlet and claims to be his dead father. The Ghost asks Hamlet to avenge his murder. Hamlet, horrified, vows to “remember.” Uncertain of whom he can trust, Hamlet feigns madness. His mother Gertrude and his uncle Claudius, who is now King of Denmark and Hamlet’s stepfather, send two of Hamlet’s friends to spy on him and to discover the cause of his apparent madness. Hamlet arranges for a play about the murder of a king to be performed, hoping that it will reveal Claudius’ guilt. Convinced that Claudius is guilty, Hamlet finds him alone but is unable to go through with killing him. Claudius sends Hamlet to England, where he has given orders for Hamlet to be killed, but Hamlet escapes. Hamlet returns to Denmark to complete his vengeance, and succeeds in killing Claudius before he himself is killed.                                                

2.     William Shakespeare, the master of Elizabethan drama is a popular but controversial playwright. Who exactly is or was William Shakespeare?

William Shakespeare’s Biography

"All the world's a stage / And all the men and women merely players."¹
So wrote William Shakespeare, a.k.a. the Bard of Avon, the master of Elizabethan drama, and the world's most famous writer. Between his birth in 1564 and his death exactly 52 years later, Shakespeare wrote 36 plays and 154 sonnets that managed to capture virtually every facet of the human experience: its darkest perversions, its most glorious triumphs, and all the laughs, tears, and dirty jokes in between.
       So who was William Shakespeare? We don't know the man nearly as well as we know his works. What we do know about his biography comes mainly from official records. These documents tell us what he did but nothing about who he was, nor what inspired the magnificent quality and diverse content of his plays. Shakespeare didn't leave behind diaries, confessional interviews, or taped appearances on Oprah, so there's no way to understand precisely the relationship between his personal experience and his plays. Of course, this hasn't stopped centuries' worth of crazy rumours from popping up around his life, some of which we'll address here. To understand where his plays come from, we're better off looking more broadly at the era in which he lived.
       William Shakespeare's career is the product of a perfect match between a man's talents and his time. Shakespeare was born during the Renaissance, the flowering of art, culture, and thought that swept through Western Europe toward the end of the Middle Ages. It was a time of great expansion for people's horizons and minds. The printing press made it possible for more people than ever before to translate and read classical texts. The sun was just rising on the English empire, with explorers discovering new lands (well, new to them, anyway; not so much to the people already living there.) The Protestant Reformation launched by Martin Luther and John Calvin was shaking up people's relationship with God and the Church. Galileo Galilei, born the same year as Shakespeare, had finally demonstrated that the Earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa (a radical idea first put forth by Copernicus, for which Galileo took a lot of heat from the Catholic Church). Add the powerful figure of Queen Elizabeth I, a great supporter of the arts, and you have the perfect conditions for a literary genius to thrive. Along comes William Shakespeare, a young man with an unprecedented facility for language and an equally impressive understanding of the breadth of the human experience.

3. We’ve heard rumours that Shakespeare didn’t actually write his own plays. Do you share the same idea?

Yes, we've heard the rumours that Shakespeare didn't actually write his own plays, that they're too good and too numerous for one person to have churned out in a lifetime. We don't buy it. There is more than enough evidence to prove that William Shakespeare really did exist, and that he really did write his plays, and that they really are still worth talking about even 400 years later. As far as we can tell, most speculation to the contrary is (as the Bard once said in a different context) little more than "a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing."² But then again, according to Shakespeare, so is everything else.

3.       Most Shakespearean works are believed to have sources of inspiration. What about Hamlet? Does this play actually have any literary source?

Shakespeare's Sources for Hamlet

Hamlet is based on a Norse legend composed by Saxo Grammaticus in Latin around 1200 AD. The sixteen books that comprise Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum, or History of the Danes, tell of the rise and fall of the great rulers of Denmark, and the tale of Amleth, Saxo's Hamlet, is recounted in books three and four. In Saxo's version, King Rorik of the Danes places his trust in two brothers, Orvendil and Fengi. The brothers are appointed to rule over Jutland, and Orvendil weds the king's beautiful daughter, Geruth. They have a son, Amleth. But Fengi, lusting after Orvendil's new bride and longing to become the sole ruler of Jutland, kills his brother, marries Geruth, and declares himself king over the land. Amleth is desperately afraid, and feigns madness to keep from getting murdered. He plans revenge against his uncle and becomes the new and rightful king of Jutland.
            Generally, it is accepted that Shakespeare used the earlier play based on this Norse legend by Thomas Kyd, called the Ur-Hamlet. There is no surviving copy of the Ur-Hamlet and the only information known about the play is that it was performed on the London stage; that it was a tragedy; that there was a character in the play named Hamlet; and a ghost who cried "Hamlet, revenge!"

5.                  Perhaps you may want to remind our keen listeners about Hamlet, the play. In a nutshell, what is Shakespeare’s Hamlet all about?

Hamlet in a Nutshell

William Shakespeare's Hamlet follows the young prince Hamlet home to Denmark to attend his father's funeral. Hamlet is shocked to find his mother already remarried to his Uncle Claudius, the dead king's brother. And Hamlet is even more surprised when his father's ghost appears and declares that he was murdered. Exact dates are unknown, but scholars agree that Shakespeare published Hamlet between 1601 and 1603. Many believe that Hamlet is the best of Shakespeare's work, and the perfect play. In this Introduction we shall examine relevant background material and provide an in-depth analysis of a play which is considered the greatest of Shakespeare’s tragedies.

6.       Let’s come back to the very question I asked you relating to genre; and permit me put it again in another way: how would you classify (may be thematically), Hamlet, The Prince of Denmark – within the context of other tragedies by Shakespeare in particular and literature in general?

Classification of Hamlet, The Prince of Denmark

Hamlet, the first in Shakespeare's series of great tragedies, was initially classified as a problem play when the term became fashionable in the nineteenth century. Like Shakespeare's other problem plays -- All's Well that End's Well, Troilus and Cressida and Measure for Measure -- Hamlet focuses on the complications arising from love, death, and betrayal, without offering the audience a decisive and positive resolution to these complications. This is due in part to the simple fact that for Hamlet, there can be no definitive answers to life's most daunting questions. Indeed, Hamlet's world is one of perpetual ambiguity.

Although those around him can and do act upon their thoughts, Hamlet is stifled by his consuming insecurities. From the moment Hamlet confronts the spirit of his father, and consistently throughout the play from that point on, what he is sure of in one scene he doubts in the next. Hamlet knows that it is the spirit of his father on the castle wall, and he understands fully its unmistakable cry for revenge. But, when he is alone, Hamlet rejects what he has witnessed in a maelstrom of doubt and fear:

The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil; and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness, and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me. (2.2.600-05.)

Modern Translation:

The ghost I saw may be the devil,

and the devil has the power

 to assume a pleasing disguise,

and so he may be taking advantage

of my weakness and sadness

to bring about my damnation.

He concludes his contemplation with the following words: ‘I need better evidence than the ghost to work with. The play’s the thing to uncover the conscience of the king.’

The emphasis on ambiguity in the play, and the absence of overt instruction on how to overcome such ambiguity is Shakespeare's testament to real life. Each one of us has experienced Hamlet's struggle to find the truth in a mire of delusion and uncertainty, often to no avail. As Kenneth Muir points out in Shakespeare and the Tragic Pattern:

[Hamlet] has to work out his own salvation in fear and trembling; he has to make a moral decision, in a complex situation where he cannot rely on cut-and-dried moral principles, or on the conventional code of the society in which he lives; and on his choice depend the fate of the people he loves and the fate of the kingdom to which he is the rightful heir. (154)

Hamlet also can be sub-categorized as a revenge play, the genre popular in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. Elements common to all revenge tragedy include: 1) a hero who must avenge an evil deed, often encouraged by the apparition of a close friend or relative; 2) scenes of death and mutilation; 3) insanity or feigned insanity; 4) sub-plays; and 5) the violent death of the hero. Seneca, the Roman poet and philosopher, is accepted to be the father of such revenge tragedy, and a tremendous influence on Shakespeare. Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, written in 1592, is credited with reviving the Senecan revenge drama as well as spawning many other plays, such as Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, the Ur-Hamlet (see the sources section), and Shakespeare's own Titus Andronicus, in addition to Hamlet.

7.                  May be one last question; contact: students, teachers of Literature in English, and fans of Literature in general may want to contact you and share their views, worries and concerns about this topic and others; any contact?

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CONCLUSION

Ladies and gentlemen, it is with this note that we draw the curtains for our today’s programme in which you have been listening to the voice of KK Bonteh.

Are you a student, a teacher, a researcher, or simply a fan of literature? Then Brunch Time Literature, is for you. We would like to share your deepest feelings. Contact us through the following address:

 Brunch Time Literature, CRTV Yaoundé,

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Until our next Episode, bye-bye! And stay connected to CRTV.

Brunch Time Literature: Episode 001                                                           KK Bonteh

CRTV Yaoundé                                                                     Monday 02/11/2015

BRUNCH TIME LITERATURE BY KK BONTEH

 Time: 10:30 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. Mondays & Fridays

Summary Analysis of “Point of Departure: Fire Dance, Fire Song I II III”

By Keorapetse Kgositsile

Synopsis of Keorapetse Kgositsile’s Biography:

Poet, Political Activist

Keorapetse William Kgositsile was born in Johannesburg, Transvaal (now Gauteng). He attended Matibane High School. Influenced by European writers such as Charles Dickens and D.H. Lawrence, Kgositsile began writing as a hobby. He soon got a job at the newspaper, New Age, where he contributed poetry and news reporting. The New Age was a radical anti-Apartheid newspaper edited by political activist Ruth First. Kgositsile, being a member of the African National Congress(ANC), through the newspaper, found a platform from where he could voice his contempt for the system. In one interview he was quoted as saying: "In a situation of oppression, there are no choices beyond didactic writing: either you are a tool of oppression or an instrument of liberation."

In 1961, under the instruction of the ANC, Kgositsile left the country. He first went to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where he worked for Spearhead magazine. The following year, he left for the United States of America (USA), where he studied at Lincoln University, Pennsylvania University, University of New Hampshire and Columbia University. He graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing.

Kgositsile gained much success in the USA. He published his first collection of poems, Spirits Unchained. It was well received and he was awarded the Harlem Cultural Council Poetry Award and the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Award. In 1971, he published his most influential collection My Name is Afrika , which established him as a leading African poet. Kgositsile wrote extensively about the American jazz scene. He also founded the Black Arts Theatre in Harlem.

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In 1974 he was a founder member of the African Literature Association together with Es'kia Mphahlele, Dennis Brutus, Daniel Kunene and Mazisi Kunene, among others.

In 1975, Kgositsile took up a teaching position at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In 1977 he founded the ANC’s Department of Education, and its Department of Arts and Culture in 1983. In 1978, Kgositsile married Baleka Mbete, a member of the ANC living in Tanzania. He took up several teaching posts in other Africans countries ”” Kenya, Botswana and Zambia.

When Apartheid ended,, Kgositsile returned to South Africa in 1990. He resumed his political activism, stating that even though Apartheid was officially over, not much had changed.  He constantly criticised Black leaders and the ANC government. His poem collection, When clouds clear was published the same year – the first of his work to be available in his native country.  

He previously held the position of Advisor to the Minister of Arts and Culture and holds the same position for Minister Lulu Xingwana.

Kgositsile was honoured with the South African Poet Laureate Prize in 2006 by the South African Literary Awards, a project of the wRite associates, in partnership with the national Department of Arts and Culture, Sowetan and Nutrend Publishers.

In 2008, he was honoured with the National Order of Ikhamanga for his contribution to the field of literature.

Kgositsile is best known for taking the resources of poetry from Africa to the African Diaspora in North America and returning the resources of African-American poetry to Africa. Lebogang Mashile, one of the youngest authors ever to win the Noma Award for publishing in Africa, has expressed her indebtedness to Kgositsile, who is often seen sharing the stage with the new spoken-word poets to whom he has been passing on the baton. His influence and inspiration is also acknowledged by established authors such as Mongane Serote, Mandla Langa and Mbulelo Mzamane.

His work includes: This Way I Salute You (2004), If I Could Sing (2002), To the Bitter End (1995), Approaches to Poetry Writing (1994), The Present is a Dangerous Place to Live (1975), When the Clouds Clear (1990), Freeword - with Katiyo, Davis, & Rydstom - (1983), Heartprints (1980), Places and Bloodstains (1976), A Capsule Course in Black Poetry Writing – with Brooks, Madhubuti & Randall – (1975), The Word is Here, ed. (1973), My Name is Africa (1971), For Melba (1971), Spirits Unchained (1969). He is also the author of numerous articles, speeches, and other materials. His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals including Guerrilla, Journal of Black Poetry, Negro Digest, The New African, Pan African Journal and Urban Review as well as in the anthologies Black Arts, Black Fire, For Malcolm andPoems Now. Worldwide appreciation of Kgositsile is evident by the presentations of his poetry, lectures on writing as a craft, revolutionary ideas on arts and culture and anti-apartheid activism.

“Point of Departure: Fire Dance, Fire Song”     By Keorapetse Kgositsile

     From Pages 204-207 POEMS OF BLACK AFRICA Edited By Wole Soyinka

(A wise old man told me in Alabama: “Yeah ,ah believes in nonviolence alright. But de only way to stay nonviolen ’in dis man’s country is to keep a gun an’ use it” Four years earlier another wise old man had told me the same Thing near Piertersburg in South Africa. He said his words of wisdom in sepedi.)

I   The Elegance of Memory

Distances separate bodies not people. Ask

Those who have known sadness or joy

The bone of feeling is pried open

By a song, the elegance

Of colour a familiar smell, this

Flower or the approach of an evening …

All this is NOW

I used to wonder

Was her grave warm enough,

‘Madikeledi my grandmother,

As big –spirited as she was big-legged,

She would talk to me. She would …

How could I know her sadness then

Or who broke my father’s back?

But now …

The elegance of memory,

Deeper than the grave

Where she went before I could

Know her sadness, is larger

Than the distance between

My county and I. Things more solid

Than the rocks with which those sinister

Thieves tried to break our back

I hear her now. And I wonder

Now does she know the strength of the fabric?

She wove in my heart for us?... Her

Voice clearer now than then: Boykie,

Don’t ever take any nonsense from them,

You hear!

               There are memories between us 

Deeper than grief. There are

Feeling between us much stronger

Than the cold enemy machine that breaks

The back. Sister, there are places between us

Deeper than the ocean, no distances.

Pry your heart open, brother, mine too,

Learn to love the clear voice

The music in the memory pried

Open to the bone of feeling, no distances

II   Lumumba Section

Searching past what we see and hear

Seering past the pretentions of knowledge

We move to the meeting place,

The pulse of the beginning the end and the beginning

In the stillnesses of the night

We see the gaping wounds where

Those murderers butchered your flesh of our land

Spirit to spirit we hear you

Then blood on blood comes the pledge

Swift as image, in spirit and blood

The sons and daughters of our biginnings

Boldly move to post-white fearlessness

Their sharpnesses at the murderer’s throat

Carving your song on the face of the earth

In the stillnesses of the night

Informed by the rhythm of your spirit

We hear the song of warriors

And rejoice to find fire in our hands

“Aint no mountain high enough…” Dig it,

The silences of the wind know it too

“Aint no valley low enough…”

Freedom, how do you do!

III   Fire Dance

There will be no dreaming about escape

There will be no  bullshit coldwar talk

            The fire burns to re-create

            the rhythms of our timeless acts

            This fire burns timeless in our

            time to destroy all nigger chains

            as real men and women emerge

            from the ruins of the rape of white greed

            The rape by savages who want to control

us, memory, nature. Savages who even forge

measures to try to control time. Don’t you

know time is not a succession of hours!

Time is always NOW, don’t you know!

Listen to the drums. That there is a point of departure

NOW is always the time. Praise be to Charlie  Parker

And it don’t have nothing to do with hours

Now  sing a song of NOW

A song of the union of pastandfuture

Sing a song of blood- The African miner, his body

Clattering to the ground with mine phthisis:

That there is murder. Do the dance of fire

The rhythm of young black men

Burning these evil white maniacs

Their greedy hands clattering to the ground

Like all their vile creations

Do our thing for the world, our world

NOW’s the time, NOW’s the time

A breath of love, song for my woman

Fire in her breast for our children

Supreme as a climax with the music of the wind

In her divine thigh there is life there is fire

Summary Analysis of  “Point of Departure: Fire Dance, Fire Song I II III”

            Keorapsetse Kgositsile poem is a carefully elaborated inspirational and inciting song for revolt against the apartheid regime in South Africa by Kgositsile. The poem choreographs all that happened to grandmothers such as Madikeledi in South Africa. All the sufferings of black South Africans in the hands of the Apartheid regime were handed down to their offspring through memories. Despite the death a long time ago of these black ancestors, a mere song they taught their offspring can ignite and relive feelings their parents felt.

            Section I opens with the speaker saying that the only thing that separates the dead from the living is the physical and not feelings and emotions for they can be rekindled at anytime. There is a special bond between the dead and their offspring, especially when it comes to emotions and feelings. Such a bond is stored in songs that rekindle these feelings any moment they are sung.

            The second stanza makes us relive the bond between ancestors and offspring Madikeledi, the speaker’s grandmother secretly taught the truth to her offspring in a song. The speaker remembers his grandmother as “big-spirited and biglegged” as she taught him. He poses a rhetorical question to find out if his grandmother’s grave is war enough; if the murderer of his father has been caught? All these memories of his tell him he needs to do more.

            The speaker tells us further that memories are so important because they go beyond death and distance. Even in the grave, Madikeledi’s memories of the apartheid have been handed down to her offspring, the speaker. The speaker feels closer to his grandmother more than ever and vivid are her feelings of torture and suffering with the white Apartheid regime.

            The speaker asks himself a series of rhetorical questions whether his grandmother knows how vividly powerful her memories are, how inflamed his heart is with her passions and clearly and soundly her last warning still rings in his ears

“Boykie, don’t ever take any nonsense from them, / You hear!” (Section I, Stanza 5, L. 1-29)

            The memories shared between grandmother and offspring are stronger that the grief of morning, much more resistant that the Apartheid regime’s attempts   at torture. Though there are differences in civilization with the write man, the speaker appeals to the write man to open his heart as he ­[the speaker] opens his. Together, they should learn to love the truth, as only the truth can make them realize themselves.

            Section II pens with the speaker appealing to the white race to see and hear beyond the propaganda the Apartheid regime preaches. They should seek to understand beyond the dogma of the Apartheid Regime. When that is done, both races with then come together to expose, address and destroy the Apartheid Regime which loots the South African nation. Together, both races will be fearless, unstoppable and ruthless in their common quest to rid themselves of the plundering Apartheid Regime.

            Section III addresses black South Africa principally. The speaker says it is time for action, no time for negotiation. The passions and the memories have been rekindled and should burn long enough to rebirth, to break the chains of enslavement and to rid South Africa of the plunderers Apartheid regime.

            Primitive minds, who want to control black South Africans, control their thoughts and memories as well as their existence. They are brutes who even attempt to control time. The speaker says managing time will be to act now on these passions and memories to boot Apartheid out of South Africa.

            He calls for war – war that will avenge; the spilled blood of black South Africans; the dead African miner with mine tuberculosis, vengeance for the cold murders of many black South Africans. In this song, the speaker sees images of young black men burning evil whites of the Apartheid regime. They need honour their women for it is from their thighs that resistance has come in South Africa.

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Ladies and gentlemen, that was Brunch Time Literature, presented to you by KK Bonteh. If you did enjoy it or have any suggestions to make why not write to us at Brunch Time Literature, CRTV Broadcasting House Yaoundé, or visit us at MTC Lanhuage Institute Biyem-Assi Stade, Yaounde. We accept voice calls and SMS us through telephone number 677.53.42.47; and emails at www.kkbonteh@yahoo.com. For details, visit our website at www.gicmtc.com. Until our next Episode, bye-bye! And stay connected to CRTV.

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